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Comment by cubefox | Hacker News Reader

I tried VR once, with a bunch of short 360° documentaries and video games like Beat Saber and Half Life Alyx. It was incredible, far beyond any immersion one could ever create on a conventional screen, even with the best ray tracing in the world.

I don't really understand why VR helmets they aren't more successful. My first guess is that any console needs exclusive high-profile games to be successful, and producing many exclusive high-profile Meta Quest games is probably too expensive for current market adoption. A chicken-egg problem.

Or maybe the hardware price isn't low enough currently. The original Game Boy was successful with its low price despite its terrible screen. The Game Boy Color chipset was very underpowered compared to the competition but again more affordable.

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VR is immersive, but it’s hard to fit in to life and there’s a limited array of content available. You can easily use a computer, watch TV or play video games while still being somewhat present with the people around you in reality. VR makes that impossible: you cannot see them, and they cannot see what you see (so even the experience of watching someone play is gone). Furthermore, this makes the experience hard to share — sharing it requires doing that as a whole activity, an activity which only one person can participate in.

Compare with setting up a home theater and having people over to watch a movie, or split screen gaming.

After all that you run into the limited content availability and, as you noted, the high price.

I do wonder why Meta hasn’t done something like license Skyrim or GTA for the quest. It shouldn’t be too expensive compared with the other investments, and would bring over some solidly popular (and big!) content.

Regarding the last point, unfortunately most games can't really be ported to VR, they need to be specifically developed for it.

As some with a gaming PC, a few VR headsets, and a steam deck, I find myself reaching for the steam deck most often. It’s a good enough experience and easy to just turn on and play. The friction to getting the VR headset out is surprisingly high so it really only happens when I’m playing with a friend, which only three friends have headsets. So it just ends up not happening.

I don't quite understand this. The friction on ordinary desktop PC gaming is also fairly high. I can't imagine playing on Quest 2 or 3 is significantly more complicated. Also, if you are playing a large RPG (like Asgards Wrath 2), a few minutes of setup won't make much of a difference in playing time. I agree it's a different issue for more casual games.

I think the more relevant difference is that there are vastly more (and therefore: better) PC games than VR games.

I think there’s a very simple explaination actually.

Most people psychologically don’t like wearing or carrying technology unless there’s a really good reason. Most people also don’t like psychologically feeling isolated.

VR doesn’t have a good reason, and makes you feel isolated. No further rationale is necessary.

The only people I know who purchased VR & regularly used it were weathly, childless and had enough spare space in their house to dedicate to it. Yes, you can blow $$$ on a pc but the footprint of a pc is much smaller (a desk+ chair against a wall) vs how much clear floor space they had set aside for VR.

I personally believe that VR of the arm swinging/interactive variety will never be widely adopted due to the cost of real estate in the tech savvy, trend-setting consumer population centers.

The terrible screen of the Gameboy didn't make you physically sick.

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